This commentary is by Will Eberle, executive director of the Vermont Association of Mental Health and Addiction Recovery. He lives with his family in Northfield, where he coaches baseball and soccer and serves on his local school board.
The New York Times recently published an article called “The Bike Thieves of Burlington, Vermont.” This portrayed a thriving community resplendent with Teslas and Cannondales and frothy milk drinks and well-trimmed mustaches and local boutiques marred by the scourges of homelessness, addiction and thievery.
It made it clear that the epicenter of the issue was a new crop of people without housing hanging out in City Hall Park day and night, abusing “new drugs,” a euphemism that was quickly replaced with the moniker “meth users,” who we all learned were involved in an elaborate bike theft ring, an “open air drug and bike market,” a veritable smorgasbord of debauchery and despair.
The piece not so subtly conveyed the feeling that if we could just get rid of those scary meth users, Burlington would be a bastion of peace and prosperity.
I am writing to present a different perspective.
Vermont is currently experiencing a staggering increase in addiction, mental health crises, and homelessness. We currently lead the nation in rate of increase of opioid overdose fatalities and have a suicide rate in the top third of all states.
Ask any direct service staff what leads to these conditions and you are very likely to see trauma at the top of the list.
There are a lot of technical ways to describe trauma, but let me take a moment to speak in plain terms from my own experience. When you experience homelessness, addiction, mental health crises, abuse, crushing poverty — when you spend your days unsure what you’ll eat next or where you’ll sleep tonight — this leads to a feeling of overwhelm and the inability to move toward your goals.
When an apartment or a car costs so much more money than you have that it might as well be a spaceship, but you can drum up enough change to buy substances that will slake that pain and hopelessness for even a short while, it seems like a logical choice. But one day you wake up to find you’re no longer able to make a choice and getting and using these substances becomes your life, not just one small feature of it.
I used to be the person sitting at City Hall Park all day that people were scared to interact with. I watched people clutch their purses a little tighter and break their neck to avoid eye contact as they briskly walked by. If they had bothered to stop and talk to me, they would have learned that all I wanted was a kind word and a real opportunity to make my real life resemble the one I knew was possible in my head.
Today it does look like that, but I didn’t do it on my own. I had people believe in me and give me chances. I had employers give me the opportunity to learn on the job and grow my responsibilities and compensation as my skills and experience increased. I had people hand me college scholarship applications and tell me they believed I could get them. I got degrees that opened the doors of ever greater opportunities and connection to ever larger rings of people who believed in me, and showed that with the ready deployment of the resources they had available.
When the most vulnerable among us are hurting the most and are at their worst, they need the people around them who are better off to be at their best. People who are living with very little to look forward to today and little hope that tomorrow will be any better desperately need the empathy, kindness and support of their community.
It is not a time when judgment, fear, or hostility will sow the seeds of transformation. It is a time when we need to live our ideals, not with placards or platitudes, but by using our actions to show that we truly value the lives of all the people in our towns and cities.
When people are cold, hungry, alone, living without housing, educational opportunities or employment, grappling with the challenges of substance use disorders and mental health challenges, they don’t need judgment or fear or shame. They need affordable housing and education and employment and transportation and food and adequately funded systems of care. They need to believe they have value, the building block of daring to try to change your life and offer your gifts to the community.
We are not going to police our way out of addiction and homelessness and mental health crises and trauma. Building taller fences or getting thicker bike locks isn’t going to make us safer. If we want to live in communities where we feel safe, we need to give the people who scare us something better than they could ever take: the knowledge that they are valued and they belong.
Go to the park. Talk to the people you find there. Take the time to see what they need. Do what you can to help. I promise we’ll all be safer.
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If you’d like help figuring out how to support people experiencing homelessness or managing mental health challenges, addiction, or other forms of trauma, feel free to reach out at director@recoveryvermont.org.